Pearl Corkhill

Pearl Elizabeth Corkhill MM was an Australian military nurse of the First World War. Trained as a nurse in Sydney, Corkhill enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force onJune 1915. After serving in France at the 1st and 3rd Australian General Hospitals, Corkhill was assigned to the 38th British Casualty Clearing Station near Abbeville onAugust 1918. OnAugust, while the camp was being heavily bombed by enemy aircraft, Corkhill remained calm and continued to tend to her patients, despite the danger. For her bravery, she was awarded the Military Medal, one of only seven Australian nurses to be so decorated in the First World War. Following the Armistice, she went on to work as a nurse at various public hospitals, and donated a large collection of her fathers photographs to the National Library of Australia.

Corkill was born onMarch 1887, the second child of William Corkhill, a grazier and photographer, and Francis Hawtrey ne Bate. Growing up on the family ranch, Marengo, near Tilba Tilba in southern New South Wales, Corkhill and her sister Ediths lives where extensively recorded by their father, who by 1890 had become a professional photographer. She was first educated by a governess before attending the public school in town. She undertook nursing training at a private hospital in Summer Hill, Sydney and qualified as a general nurse in 1914.

Source: Wikipedia